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Student Aid, Tuition and How Colleges Spend Money

There is no agreement among economists over whether there is a causal effect between student aid and college tuition.

July 30, 2015

Regarding your editorial “College Aid Means Higher Tuition” (July 20): There is no agreement among economists over whether there is a causal effect between student aid and college tuition. Many methodologically strong studies explicitly conclude there is no correlation, let alone causation.

For example, an analysis last fall by the Congressional Research Service concluded that “it is not plausible to say that college prices would not have gone up much or at all in the absence of increases in federal financial aid.” An earlier...